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Satori Shakoor moves through art forms the way great musicians move through keys. One minute she is on a Pittsburgh stage as a Bride of Funkenstein, the next she is laying the groundwork for Obsidian Theatre in Toronto, then she is on PBS hosting and elevating new voices. Throughout each chapter, a single thread remains: storytelling as a witness, medicine, and a public square.

In conversation with AfroToronto.com, Shakoor traces a life shaped by music, comedy, theatre, and community building, culminating in her stand-up storytelling concert film, Confessions of a Menopausal Femme Fatale. The work speaks plainly about the often-overlooked realities of women’s health, especially for Black women, and invites audiences to laugh, grieve, and take action.

Detroit courses through Shakoor’s art. The city has long been a proving ground where new shows test their mettle before Broadway and artists sharpen their voice before the world. That energy drew her back after early success with George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic family. Detroit’s audiences, she says, are a reliable gauge of what resonates. Perhaps that is why her stage is never only a stage. It is a gathering place, a rehearsal for collective healing.

From P-Funk to founding Obsidian Theatre

Shakoor’s leap from touring vocalist to theatre catalyst started with a simple, stubborn idea: if the door won’t open, build a new house. In late-90s Toronto, she encountered the quiet limits placed on Black stories—one token slot here, a single casting line there. Rather than accept those ceilings, she linked arms with Alison Sealy-Smith, Yanna McIntosh, Philip Akin, and a coalition of artists to launch Obsidian Theatre. It quickly became a lodestar for culturally specific storytelling and craft development. The original play she hoped to produce never made it to the stage, but the point had shifted. The mission evolved into infrastructure, representation, and a steady platform for generations of Black Canadian artists to test, learn, grow, and soar. Twenty-five years on, Obsidian’s legacy proves what happens when talent meets institution-building.

Why Detroit keeps making classics

Ask a Detroiter and you’ll hear it: the city blends working-class grit with global Black culture. Motown’s polish, P-Funk’s swagger, and contemporary theatre’s edge coexist in one compressed arts ecosystem. Out-of-town shows find their shape here because Detroit audiences don’t simply applaud; they adjudicate. Shakoor sees this as a civic service. If it lands in Detroit, there is a good chance it will resonate beyond the city.

Turning the lights on menopause

Confessions of a Menopausal Femme Fatale grew from a promise Shakoor made to her younger self. When perimenopause arrived—hot flashes, mood swings, sleep disruption—silence met her questions. Mothers “didn’t remember.” Older women deflected. Doctors, she learned, receive little training on menopause. She began writing, first to name the symptoms, then to map the emotional weather around them. The piece evolved into a stage show and was later captured as a filmed concert, spanning three performances. Her choice to fuse songs, jokes, and hard truths breaks the tension and opens the room. Audiences return to watch again because they hear their own lives reframed with dignity.

Before the film’s central arc takes flight, a panic attack on a plane cracks open memory. The narrative flashes between past and present—Hawai‘i, Detroit, Toronto—braiding postpartum depression, addiction, grief, and reinvention. The result is a midlife odyssey that treats ageing as initiation and wisdom as earned currency. “If I’m too much,” she quips in one electric passage, “why not go for being way too much?”

What the film brings into the open

Before the following list, a word on form. Shakoor doesn’t aim for a medical primer. She crafts an emotional map that audiences can walk. The bullet points below capture recurring themes and why they resonate across communities.

• Permission to speak plainly: The film names perimenopause and menopause in all their messiness—hot flashes, insomnia, heart flutters—so women can advocate for care, and families can respond with empathy.

• Humour as a pressure valve: Laughter carries difficult truths. Songs and jokes make space for information to land without shame.

• A Black woman’s health lens: Shakoor raises patterns familiar to many in our communities—longer menopause duration for some Black women, higher rates of fibroids, and the harm of bias in clinical settings—and pushes for better training and access.

• Community over isolation: Viewers often see themselves in the story, then talk, then organize. The film’s afterglow is conversation at the kitchen table and emails to human resources leads asking for workplace policies that don’t ignore midlife.

• Art as continuity: By filming the show, Shakoor keeps the story circulating wherever people stream. It’s a living archive for daughters, aunties, co-workers, and anyone who will eventually cross this threshold.

The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers

Loss turned Shakoor back to story. After her mother’s passing in 2005 and her son’s death the following year, she found herself telling true tales on The Moth and feeling the first lift of healing. Detroit, battered by austerity and crisis, needed a similar lift. She founded The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers in 2012 and began producing monthly events that quickly sold out and grew in popularity. The stage welcomes everyday people, elders, and newcomers who each carry one story that might change someone else’s life. Workshops travel to universities, hospitals, faith communities, and advocacy groups, where participants learn to shape a testimony and bring it where it matters—into a clinic, a council chamber, or a boardroom.

What storytelling changes in real life

Communities don’t transform through data alone. They also transform when a neighbour stands up and explains exactly what a biased assumption costs them. Shakoor’s workshops have supported women addressing maternal health inequities and survivors confronting sexual violence. The goal is practical: equip people to speak in rooms where decisions are made and to be heard as full human beings.

Memory under pressure, memory holding strong

Shakoor is clear-eyed about the moment. Currents of censorship and historical revision swirl across North America. Yet she trusts the endurance of memory in Black, Indigenous, and global South traditions, where story lives in mouths and bodies, not only in textbooks. Museums may try to rewrite a nation’s past, platforms may change their rules, but families and communities will keep passing on truth. We may come through bruised, she says, but we will come through. Protest makes a path. So does art.

Where to watch and how to go deeper

Before we point you to links, here’s why access matters. A film like Confessions transforms private experiences into a collective language. Making it easy to find helps conversations ripple into workplaces, creative circles, and homes.

• Watch the film: Confessions of a Menopausal Femme Fatale is streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, and Google Play.
• Explore the artist: Learn more about Satori Shakoor’s performances, workshops, and upcoming events at her website.
• Join the circle: The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers shares live events, videos, and community calls for stories at TwistedTellers.org.

Why this matters

Toronto’s Black creative communities intersect with Shakoor’s story at multiple points. Obsidian Theatre helped codify a professional home for Black talent in this city, and its ripple effects are visible across festivals, stages, and writers’ rooms. The menopause conversation, meanwhile, remains under-resourced in Canadian workplaces and families. A film that gets people laughing, nodding, and then talking may be the most effective awareness campaign of all. For Caribbean and African diasporic audiences from Scarborough to Mississauga, the blend of music, migration, and midlife truth feels familiar. It feels like home.

Quick takeaways for continuing the conversation

Intro first, because bullet points need a frame. When stories lead, policy follows. Use the sparks from Shakoor’s work to shape tangible support.

• Start a watch-and-talk night with aunties, friends, and co-workers, then collect questions for a local clinician who understands menopause care.
• Ask HR for clear guidelines on midlife accommodations, flexible scheduling, and benefits that recognize menopausal health needs.
• Invite a storytelling workshop to your campus, union, or community group to turn lived experience into advocacy.
• Support Black-led theatres, such as Obsidian, and grassroots platforms that nurture artists who tell the truths we need.

Final thoughts

Satori Shakoor’s career reads like a map of Black cultural infrastructure. It begins with the funk, passes through Toronto’s theatre renaissance, lands in Detroit’s resilient creative scene, and returns to our screens to argue for dignity in midlife. The film at the heart of this conversation portrays menopause as a storyworthy experience and women as authoritative narrators of their own bodies. That alone is a cultural correction.

What lingers is the civic lesson. Platforms rise when people build them, healing accelerates when stories are shared, and futures open when communities insist on seeing and hearing one another in their fullness. Shakoor’s work makes a simple invitation to AfroToronto readers: carry your truth into the room. When you do, the room changes.

Learn more about Satori Shakoor and her work

• Confessions of a Menopausal Femme Fatale is available on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, and Google Play.
• Explore upcoming shows, workshops, and speaking engagements on her website.
• Discover The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers at TwistedTellers.org.
• Visit her Instagram page.